She is as bright-eyed and bushy-tailed as she is in all her videos, even at am. Her dad immigrated to New York in like and bought two buildings downtown that my entire family still live in together. Raised in that same building in New York, the writer, director and actor has a dedicated following on TikTok, where she has amassed 1.
You name it, Alya has played it. We spoke to the actress about where she finds inspiration for her characters, the transformative power of the theatre, and how grateful she is for the internet. Vienna Ayla: It has been just about four years, exactly. I posted my first video in February , and I started because I was auditioning in New York, and I had just gotten a role in a play that I was so excited about, and then the play got indefinitely cancelled, as so many things did because of COVID It was such a weird thing because I could tell once I started that it was going to be a big thing for me and become a massive part of my life.
I knew the most challenging part would be starting, so I remember talking to many people and then eventually forcing myself to do it; then I started posting with a friend. I began to pay attention to the algorithm and what my audience wanted to see.
TikTok was such a different place back then. It was like the Wild West. Your skits are so funny and so relatable. Where do you find inspiration for them? There is something so recognisable in the women you caricature. Vienna Ayla: Apart from my family who have inspired so much of my work, I learned how to play a character going into high school.
I went to this very preppy New England boarding school, where I clocked all these archetypes, and in those four years, I played a lot of different characters. I learned how to dissociate from myself, maybe in an unhealthy way. Still, I also learned to recognise these little things about people and how we all feel most comfortable in specific performances. Then I went to a liberal arts college, which blew everything up. I remember coming out of my freshman year, I was wound so tight.
